


I was more, when I was alive

by dreams_and_bones



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: 'major character death' only in that, Angst, F/M, Jukebox, Luke is canonically dead from like minute 12, Oneshot, and then shit goes down, inspired by how Noah is portrayed in the Raven Cycle, juke, julie as the source of their energy, kinda creepy, no one else dies, some decaying jukebox for the teenage soul, the boys' souls are decaying, this kinda turned into an exploration of death?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 06:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30017370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreams_and_bones/pseuds/dreams_and_bones
Summary: Luke's soul is decaying - Julie is the only thing holding it together."Luke?" she called again, taking a few more steps towards him. He was miming something, like he was grabbing objects, but she didn't know what. He reached through the back of the couch with one hand, and she was having a hard time focusing on him, her eyes skipping to the side. focusing on the wall.Focusing on the wallthroughhim. Dread flooded Julie's veins. He was there, but he wasn't; he was the shape of Luke, but not the depth of him.He flickered.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	I was more, when I was alive

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw this post by @jomaiin and I couldn't stop thinking about Luke's soul decaying.

In life, Luke had been nothing if not unrelentingly present. He had thought that perhaps he felt things more strongly than those around him. Everything he loved, he loved fiercely. He rode through life on his passion, on his dreams and his hurt, and he poured it into his music. It was easy for him to shine on stage; his emotions were genuine and he desperately wanted to share them with people, to reach out and say _we love in the same way_ and _we grieve in the same way_. To say _I have felt the way you do_ , and to have someone sing it back to him, _we're in this together_. When he wrote lyrics with the boys, it was a reminder that they understood each other. When they sang together, it was a promise that they weren't alone. 

"You're a lot," Alex would say sometimes, but it was affectionate. Once, he had confessed that after hours balancing on the fractured connection between Alex and his parents, all surface conversation, _a lot_ was what he needed.

"You're kind of too much," other people would say sometimes, and Luke never tried to convince them otherwise, even though the comment sat and scraped at his ribs. _Too much for what?_

But then Reggie would sing with him and Bobby would draw him into a songwriting session that was half duet and half competition. Alex would grin at him over his drums, or, on the worst days, lay his head quietly on Luke's shoulder and let Luke talk about his dreams for Sunset Curve until they could all see them as brightly and clearly as he could.

Luke had been nothing if not unrelentingly _alive_

This was the Luke Julie knew. He loved and he hurt, he felt acutely betrayed and fought for his dreams. But after, Alex and Reggie could see something different. 

Luke was quieter without Julie around. He would let time slip past him without using it. 

They all would. 

When they learned about what Bobby had done, Luke felt the sting of betrayal like he had in life; at Trevor's house, with Julie racing across town towards him, he had been driven by his hurt. 

Far away from her, in the bright lights of the Hollywood Ghost Club, everything seemed slightly less important, and time slid haphazardly around all of them. 

They all felt it. When Julie was around, every emotion was sharper, every physical action was easier. She was the spark that lit up their souls. She didn't know that they were different without her - how could she?

But when they were alone, time would slip by unevenly, a record skipping. Touching things got harder. They would replay scenes from their lives in their minds' eye, forgetting their deaths for stretches of time. When Julie walked in, everything would come crashing back, time would snap back into place, their bones would knit back together and all at once, the needle would settle into the groove of the record, and the world would be a little brighter. 

Luke felt it most acutely. He didn't know how to describe it, except that he felt lost when Julie wasn't there; not in that he didn't know where he was, but in that his soul had nothing to hold on to. Before, he thought, his soul had been shot through with music, tied to their instruments, animated with his voice. Those things were still true, but they were less, without Julie. He was less. 

He didn't know how to tell her this, but he was worried that someday he would forget what he had been like, what he was like with her. It was a line repeated in his notebook, over and over, so close to a lyric but never something he could put into a song. 

_I was more, when I was alive._

Time was slipping. The record skipped, backwards, playing a broken version of a song it had played before.

Julie watched the tears stream down Luke's cheeks, her hand braced on the door. He was shouting something, or at least she thought he must be, but no sound was coming out.

"Luke?" she called, unsure. She'd seen him angry before, but it was usually turned inwards, like there was pain in his chest. Now he was gesturing at someone, looking at someone, but there wasn't anyone else in the studio with them. She was in her pajamas; she'd been unable to sleep, and Luke hadn't been there. 

Sometimes, on nights like this, he would poof into her bedroom. He said he could feel it, in his chest, that something was wrong. _Ghost magic_ , he'd said, with that soft, irresistible smile, and she hadn't really believed him, but she wanted him to stay, so she didn't question it. She let him sit against the wall and she would use his leg as a pillow, and he would sing quietly. His voice would seep into her body, filling up the empty corners and washing over her racing thoughts until enough knots in her had been untied and she could drift off. _Ghost magic_ he'd said, and she almost believed him, because almost every time she really needed him, he would appear. 

Almost. 

Not tonight.

So she'd gone looking, hours after telling herself she should be asleep, hours of trying not to think about how it was almost her seventeenth birthday and how her mother had promised her that when she turned seventeen they would go on a road trip, just the two of them, had promised it for years. She couldn't make her heart slow down, couldn't make her thoughts stop chasing themselves in circles, imagining what could have been. So she went to find him. 

And here he was, shouting at nothing, his mouth outlining silent, voiceless screams. 

She took a step forward and he paused, infinitesimally, and for a moment she thought he might know she was there. But then he turned away, his face crumpling, his hand gripping his hair at the back of his head. She watched, stunned, as he took several steps into the couch and stopped, shaking, knee-deep in the fabric. She'd seen the boys phase through things, but it was usually temporary and intentional, and with large pieces of furniture or walls, they often had to focus on it. Luke seemed to have no concept of the fact that he was standing in the couch, and instead started reaching for things that Julie couldn't see. 

"Luke?" she called again, taking a few more steps towards him. He was miming something, like he was grabbing objects, but she didn't know what. He reached through the back of the couch with one hand, and she was having a hard time focusing on him, her eyes skipping to the side, focusing on the wall. 

Focusing on the wall _through_ him. Dread flooded Julie's veins. He was there, but he wasn't; he was the shape of Luke, but not the depth of him. 

He flickered. 

She stumbled towards him, an impulse, a desperate step. Cold was tugging at her blood and her heartbeat echoed in her ears as though it wasn't nestled snugly between her lungs but pounding in an empty cavern. Luke surged back into existence and whirled towards her, mid-shout, making horrible eye contact. He was looking at her, through her, past her, his eyes a blaze of fury.

She was only a few feet from him, but he was unnerving, too bright, his gestures jerky, a doll jumping on the end of strings. 

He flickered again and in the same moment cold crashed through Julie's body. She fell to her knees, reaching for him, but his whole form was shuddering in and out, and the only parts of him she could focus on were his cheekbones, shining and white, his skin smoke over bone. 

"Luke?"

Her voice was a whisper, but he was moving towards her, a skull and a memory in the shape of a boy as she reached out and grabbed his hand. For a terrible, terrible moment, she was touching his bones. They were impossibly dry, fragile, cold. Something deep in Julie's chest dragged itself through her ribs, leaving them frigid. Luke's body shuddered back into reality.

" _CAN'T YOU JUST BELIEVE IN ME FOR ONCE MOM-_ ”

He broke off, his voice echoing around the studio. These four walls had tossed Luke's words between them a thousand times, across decades, but never before had he sounded like this. He had crashed back into reality ragged and broken, his shouts like nothing Julie had ever heard before. He stumbled away from her, out of the couch, his hands scrabbling at the tears on his face.

"Julie?" he asked, lowering his shaking hands. He looked lost, thrown from time.

Julie found she didn't even have the voice to respond. She barely had the energy to stay on her knees. Instead, she just stared at him. His body was back, like it always had been, solid-looking and stable. But she could still feel his bones under her fingertips. When she closed her eyes, his skull grinned at her in the darkness. 

A hand settled on her shoulder, and she scrambled backwards, tripping over her feet and falling onto the end of the couch, shaking. Every inch of her was heavy with dread.

"Julie, I - are you okay?" he asked. Luke was looking at her with those wide, pleading eyes that only half an hour ago she would have described as _irresistible_. She knew she had hurt him by flinching away from his touch, but something between them had broken. She was unable to keep the fear off her face, and she could see it reflected back in his. 

_"You should see the way he looks at you on stage," Flynn had said._

_"I see the way he looks at me," she'd protested, "It's how he always looks."_

_Flynn had shaken her head. "No, it's not. He looks at you like you're the only thing in the world."_

_"That's just Luke," she'd protested, but she knew the look Flynn was talking about. When he looked at her like that, she would do anything for him._

She knew, now, that those eyes were gone. They were a trick of the light, a memory made too strong, a dream that ran on the heat in her blood. He was a skeleton in a box somewhere, dry and brittle and _dead_. Unequivocally, irrevocably dead. 

"Julie?" he asked again, and his voice sounded so _normal_ , so deeply antithetical to the broken spirit that she had just dragged back into reality. He had a hopeful half smile on his face, like he thought maybe he could cheer her up. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

It was meant to be a joke, she knew. 

It didn't feel like one. It felt like her heart laid out in the snow. 

She'd thought, maybe, that he loved her. She'd thought, maybe, that she loved him.

She'd convinced herself that he was real, in all the ways that counted. Didn't you fall in love with a soul, anyway? That's why they called it soulmates - it had nothing to do with the body, it was all about what made the person fundamentally a person. 

She knew better now. A person without a body was untethered to time and place. 

The Luke Julie knew was a lot of things, but when he reached for her again, all concern and no concentration, and his hand slipped through her knee, Julie knew that more than anything else, the Luke she knew was a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come say hi on Tumblr @phantomsandsunsets


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